ECON 201 10 & 12 Spring 2014, College of Charleston Department of Economics and Finance Professor: Norman Maynard Email: maynardna@cofc.edu Office & Phone: Beatty 429, 843-953-8104 Class Location: Beatty 320 Office Hours: 9:45-10:45am TR, 1:00-2:00pm W Class Hours - 10: 10:50am-12:05pm TR Prerequisites: ECON 200 Class Hours - 12: 4:00pm-5:15pm TR COURSE DETAILS: Course policies may be changed during the semester. Any changes will be announced in class. Course Description: The foundation of aggregate economic analysis is presented, including identification of basic social goals, money and credit systems, and theories of national income, employment and economic growth, and international interdependence. Professor s Summary: This course provides students with an introduction to economic analysis of the aggregate economy. The class is designed to provide students with a framework for understanding economic policies and discussions regarding both long-run economic growth and short-run business cycles. Topics covered will include basic economic concepts, unemployment, inflation, monetary and fiscal policy, and long-run economic growth. The class will emphasize the use of models to understand key facts about the macro economy. Web Resources: This course posts grades and announcements through CofC s OAKS system. Online quizzes will also be administered through OAKS. Students are required to check their CofC email and OAKS regularly for updates. Required Texts: Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles: Macroeconomics, 2nd ed, Worth Publishers. ISBN: 978-1-4292-3998-1. Additional readings and other media may be assigned at the professor s discretion. Students will be informed in a preceding class period when an additional reading assignment is due. COURSE OBJECTIVES AND LEARNING GOALS: The course meets the following School of Business and Economics learning goals: Global and Civic Responsibility; Quantitative Fluency; Communication Skills. Demonstration of achievement will be through completion of online quizzes and in-class midterms. After completing this course, students should understand the following Basic macroeconomic facts- simple measures of aggregate income, economic growth, money, unemployment, and inflation; crosscountry income and growth comparisons; historical and recent business cycle movements in the United States; the institutional basics of the Federal Reserve system and the Federal Government Budget. After completing this course, students should also understand the following Basic macroeconomic models- competitive markets; the Solow growth model; the market for loanable funds; the quantity theory of money; the Fisher effect; and the dynamic aggregate supply aggregate demand model. General Education Student Learning Outcome: Students apply social science concepts, models, and theories to explain human behavior, social interactions, and social institutions. This learning outcome will be assessed in Midterm #3. 1
GRADING POLICY: ECON 200 is a pre-requisite for ECON 201. Before taking this course: all School of Business majors must earn a C- or better in ECON 200 to continue with a major in the School of Business. Students are responsible for all information presented in class or through required readings, videos, or activities. The grading scale is as follows: Percentage Grade 90% 87% 82% 80% 77% Letter Grade A B+ B B- C+ Percentage Grade 72% 70% 67% 60% < 60% Letter Grade C C- D+ D F The distribution of points across assignments is as follows: Online Reading Quizzes 20% Online Application Quizzes 30% 5 Midterms (+1 final, lowest dropped) 50% Total 100% Online Quizzes. Students will take two types of online quizzes: Reading and Application. Quizzes are randomized, so you may not have the same set of questions as another student. The grade for each component will be the average performance on all quizzes in that category. Reading. Students will complete quizzes covering the recently assigned reading materials and other media on OAKS. These quizzes will follow the material in the textbook, slides, and practice problems. They will also provide students with a chance to inform the professor of which topics need the most discussion and practice in class. Reading quizzes will make up 20% of your course grade. Application. After each weekly section of material has been covered, students will take an online quiz covering the same material. These quizzes may be taken up to 3 times, with the individual quiz grade equal to the average of all attempts. Application quizzes will make up 30% of your course grade. Midterms. Students will complete in-class midterms on the following dates: 16 January, 6 February, 27 February, 27 March, and 17 April. These midterms will be short (roughly the last 25 minutes at the end of class) and will be a mixture of objective (multiple choice / fill-in-the-blank) questions, graphical analysis, and short essay questions. No electronics of any kind may be used during in-class assignments. All material in assigned readings, slides, other media, and lecture will be considered testable, and while midterms will generally focus on material not tested on previous midterms, they may contain a cumulative component due to the nature of the course material. There will be 5 midterms, with the grade for this component being the average of all five. The midterms will make up fifty percent (50%) of your course grade. Final Exam. The comprehensive final exam will take place in Beatty 320. For Section 10, the exam will take place on Saturday, 26 April, from 8:00am to 11:00am. For Section 12, the exam will take place on Tuesday, 29 April, from 8:00am to 11:00am. The final exam format and testable material will be the same as for the midterms, although the final will be considerably longer in length. The final exam will replace your lowest midterm grade; if the final is the lowest grade, it will be dropped. No make-up assignments will be offered for any reason. Students are expected to complete online assignments far enough in advance to avoid losing points due to computer malfunctions, power outages, or similar rare events. If a student will be unable to attend a midterm, they should inform the professor prior to the assignment s due date and that midterm will be dropped from the student s grade. As in all financial matters, short-sightedness always leads to eventual failure, so please be careful when taking advantage of this policy. Finally, each student is responsible for their own grade. There will be no bumping up or rounding up offered at the end of the semester. If you are concerned about getting a certain letter grade, you must put in the effort and achieve the performance required by the standards of the course. ECON 201 Syllabus Page 2
UNGRADED RESOURCES: Classroom Interaction. Although this course will involve lecturing, repeated analysis has shown that non-interactive courses are often not the most effective way for college students to learn challenging material. As such, the lectures themselves will be to a large extent driven by student feedback on reading quizzes. This allows us to use our time more effectively on topics where many students are having difficulty. The class will also devote a fair amount of time to working practice problems, both as examples in front of the class and in smaller groups. As the class progresses and students improve their skills at economic analysis, it will become more and more driven by in-class discussion. College credit is built around a 2:1 rule, which means that for the average student to earn an average grade (C), you should expect to work 2 hours outside the classroom for every 1 hour in. In the case of this course, which is worth 3 credit hours, this means students should expect to work 6 hours outside the classroom in order to earn an average grade. Some students will need to invest more time than this, and students seeking higher grades will likely need to correspondingly increase their time investment. In order to make these outside classroom hours as productive as possible, students are provided with the following additional resources. Reading Assignments. Students will be given chapters in the assigned textbook to read every week. These chapters include questions for students to review in the back of each chapter. Problem Sets. Students will have access to practice problems from the professor s test bank in order to familiarize themselves with the types of questions that appear on midterms. Some of these questions will be used as examples or group activities in class. Students may also discuss these problems with the professor during office hours. However, the professor will not grade these assignments, and students will not be provided with an answer key to the problem sets at any time. Office Hours. Students may come to the professors office during designated office hours to ask clarifying questions, work through practice problems, discuss their current standing in the course, or develop study plans for this course. If a student is unable to attend the designated office hours, they may contact the professor (preferably by email) to schedule an appointment at another time. Please keep in mind that it is unprofessional to miss specially scheduled appointments. Online Videos. Students will have access to videos which expand on readings and in-class presentations. Although some videos may be shown in class, most will be optional supplements which students may view at their convenience. Online Slides. Students will have access to slides which represent the basic outline for the lectures in the course. Since student feedback will be directly shaping what is discussed during classroom hours, these slides may not exactly match the classroom lectures, but they should be considered a basic building-block for the course material. Red Questions. After each reading quiz, the professor will compile a list of the most-missed questions (less than 50% of respondents answered correctly), or red questions. This list of questions, and their answers, will be made available online later in the week, and will sometimes be used for classroom practice and discussion. Discussion Boards. Studying in groups can be a highly effective way to learn challenging material, and is common practice in more mathematically challenging courses. As such, the professor will provide discussion boards on OAKS where students may talk about problem sets, difficult material, and other challenges of the course. Students are expected to remain professional and courteous at all times on the boards. Students may also wish to form their own study groups, especially in advance of midterms. Additional Resources. Since this is a college-level course, students are in part learning to take the initiative in their own learning process. As such, students are encouraged to seek out additional sources of information, examples, and practice. These sources could include internet searches, the college library, or even outside tutoring. Students may wish to consult with the professor to find out how these outside sources may relate or differ from the material presented in class. ECON 201 Syllabus Page 3
CLASSROOM AND UNIVERSITY PROTOCOL: The class will be formatted around interactive lectures and class discussion / problem-solving. Students will be expected to complete online quizzes, actively participate in class discussions, complete five in-class midterms and one final exam. Enrolled students not present during the first two weeks of class may be removed from the course at the professor s discretion. All students are expected to behave in a professional and respectful manner at all times. Attendance, Tardiness, and Participation: This course does not impose graded penalties based on attendance, tardiness, or participation. However, students are expected to be consistently present and actively engaged in class, and are responsible for all material discussed during classtime, whether they were present or not. The professor will assume all students have done the assigned readings prior to each class. Keep in mind that office hours are a complement for the lecture, not a substitute; please acquire notes from classmates for missed class periods. In general, performance leading to a passing grade will require students to attend every lecture. Please be respectful of the other students regarding late entry into / early departure from the classroom. Cell Phones: Out of respect for the professor and other students, cell phones should not be used during class hours. The professor reserves the right to answer any calls or read to the class any texts sent or received during class, and to confiscate phones used in class. If a cell phone goes off during a graded assignment due to a call, text, alarm, or for any other reason, the student in possession of the cell phone will be required to turn in the assignment immediately and may not continue working on the assignment. There will be no other grade penalty associated with use of cell phones during regular class hours. Reasonable Accommodation: The College will make reasonable accommodations for persons with documented disabilities. Students should apply at thecenter for Disability Services / SNAP, located on the first floor of the Lightsey Center, Suite 104. 1 Students approved for accommodations are responsible for notifying the professor as soon as possible and for contacting the professor one week before accommodation is needed. Academic Integrity: Students are required to know and abide by the College of Charleston Honor Code. 2 There will be at least one question related to the Honor Code on Midterm #1. Any incidents of lying, cheating, attempted cheating, or plagiarism will be reported, and may result in a grade of XF, disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion from the College. Unauthorized collaboration working together without explict permission from the professor is a form of cheating. Research conducted and/or papers written for other classes cannot be used in whole or in part for any assignment in this class without obtaining prior permission from the professor. 1 http://disabilityservices.cofc.edu/ 2 http://studentaffairs.cofc.edu/honor-system/studenthandbook/index.php ECON 201 Syllabus Page 4
COURSE SCHEDULE: (This schedule is subject to change. Any changes will be announced in class or posted online no later than the end of the class period before the change takes effect.) WEEK OF: TUESDAY THURSDAY OTHER ASSIGNMENTS 6 JAN INTRO 13 JAN CT 3, 4, 5 MIDTERM #1 RQ #1, AQ #1 20 JAN CT 6 RQ #2, AQ #2 27 JAN CT 7 RQ #3, AQ #3 3 FEB CT 8 MIDTERM #2 RQ #4 10 FEB CT 9 RQ #5, AQ #4 17 FEB CT 10 RQ #6, AQ #5 24 FEB CT 12 MIDTERM #3 RQ #7 3 MAR Spring Break - No Class 10 MAR CT 11 RQ #8, AQ #6 17 MAR* CT 13 RQ #9, AQ #7 24 MAR MIDTERM #4 RQ #10 31 MAR CT 15, 16 RQ #11, AQ #8 7 APR CT 17, 18 RQ #12, AQ #9 14 APR MIDTERM #5 AQ #10 21 APR Final Review FINAL EXAM Saturday, 26 April, 8:00am 11:00am Section 10 only Tuesday, 29 April, 4:00pm 7:00pm Section 12 only CT indicates chapter assignments for the textbook, Cowen and Tabarrok s Modern Principles: Macroeconomics. Students are expected to complete readings before class on the first day the reading is assigned. RQ stands for reading quiz; AQ stands for application quiz. Reading quizzes must be completed no later than 8:00am Tuesday on the week the assignment is due. Application quizzes must be completed no later than 5:00pm Friday on the week the assignment is due. *March 21 is the last day for students to withdraw with a grade of "W" from full semester classes. ECON 201 Syllabus Page 5